Hamachi!

Every few months (even years) i stumble into this piece of software that makes me feel like i'm receiving my Atari 2600 for Xmas all over again. HAMACHI falls just right under that category. Unlike its distant cousin Tamaguchi it is not a little device with an animation that you have to feed, take care and play with...

Quoting their website: "Hamachi gives you a LAN over the internet." As easy as that. And what I like about it the most is that it plays well with others. It runs in Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. What more can you ask for? (Ok,ok.ok... i can already hear some BSD, Solaris, Palm OS people shouting...).


Check out my current setup:


No matter where i am with my laptop... i can always reach all of my files, even from the Mac G5! So far so good. I've been testing and the speed is not that bad (no Formula 1 trophies either...).

Windows installation is pretty straight forward... so lets focus on getting hamachi running on the linux box.

You may download the package from here

As of this posting the version for linux file is hamachi-0.9.9.9-20-lnx.tar.gz

let's play:

#tar -xvzf hamachi-0.9.9.9-20-lnx.tar.gz
# cd hamachi*
#make install
#tuncfg (for MacOS users... there is an extra step involved so you can get a tun device in Darwin)
# hamachi-init
Initializing Hamachi configuration (/root/.hamachi). Please wait ..

generating 2048-bit RSA keypair .. ok
making /root/.hamachi directory .. ok
saving /root/.hamachi/client.pub .. ok
saving /root/.hamachi/client.pri .. ok
saving /root/.hamachi/state .. ok

Authentication information has been created. Hamachi can now be started with
'hamachi start' command and then brought online with 'hamachi login'.

# hamachi start

# hamachi login
Logging in ....>....... ok (this is were you connect to the hamachi network)


Now you will need to create your own network, in this example im creating the "mytestnetwork1" network with a password of "mypassword". (I've been blessed with creativity this morning).

#hamachi create mytestnetwork1 mypassword

Ok, so we should name our linux server something, lets call it CONAN (the comedian, not the barbarian).
#hamachi set-nick CONAN
#hamachi go-online mytestnetwork1
password:*******

lets get everyone names...

#hamachi get-nicks
#hamachi list

There you will notice that you get a 5.x.x.x IP address... that is your address on your Hamachi network. Now you can use that IP to use shared drives... get webpages... whatever you want from your network!


Cool huh? try it out!